Folding@Home Team Ubuntu recruiting notice

[nanotube]

If only folding could help cure those ... hehe

interestingly enough, if it helps us figure out brain chemistry better, it actually can! (to a certain extent)

[popch]

I'd say the main roadblock is ignorance. You can't participate in something you don't know about. After that, apathy.

How about corporate firewalls and other security measures?

[Tundro Walker]

How about corporate firewalls and other security measures?

Oh, come now. Any self-respecting Linux user would know how to hack through that.

Actually, your right on that one. The first comp I installed it on was my work comp, but that was only because I have admin rights.

It'd be interesting if more companies would get involved with this, or with distributed computing as a whole. I can say from experience, most of the comp's where I work are in the 2ghz+ range, but most are used for call center / sales work, and the tools the folks use don't require much horsepower.

I was half-tempted to talk to the folks in IT about rolling out F@H on all the call center comp's using a unique company team name. But I decided not, since I didn't want to draw attention to me running it on my work comp.

So:

1) laptops get hot running 100%
2) corporate comp / firewalls
3) ignorance / apathy
4) omg! pink ponies!

We're advertising like crazy, which helps #3, but #1 & #2 are hard to overcome. And #4, well crap, you'd have to walk on water to overcome that.

[jpkotta]

How about corporate firewalls and other security measures?

If you can't ask your network admin to allow F@H to connect to the internet, then maybe you aren't allowed to run it at work? The official line is F@H is only OK to run if you have the owner's permission.

That said, I run it at work. I haven't explicitly asked, but people know I run it and don't care. At another job, it was not allowed, but I ran it anyway (their IT policy was draconian, which kind of makes sense when you consider what kind of company it was). I copied competed WUs and uploaded them at home (sneakernet).

[Seisen]

Iis it better to run a dual-core as one processor (smp) or as two seperate processors when folding?

[T313C0mun1s7]

Iis it better to run a dual-core as one processor (smp) or as two seperate processors when folding?

My understanding is that the smp client is designed for quad core and up. This means 4 or more cores, not 2 cores and HyperThreading to make it appear as four cores.

If you want to run on a dual core machine the Stanford FAQs appear to make it sound like it would be better to run two separate instances of the standard client.

The other option is to run the version 6 client with the -smp flag, but I don't know if this is any different from running the smp client. I think they are just merging the clients into one, but they don't say anything about running version 6 with -smp on less than four cores, all they say is that the switch will request smp workunits. So I am not sure what the results would be, of course I am not aware of any hazards of running the smp core on a dual core, it was just not designed for less than four.

[Seisen]

Well than I will just keep it the way it is than.

[Tundro Walker]

I'm running the SMP beta on my dual-core system. It creates 4 threads, and they swap %'s back and forth. Standford wrote in their SMP summary that it's ok to run it on a dual-core, even though it makes 4 threads.

Mine works fine, and the SMP client regularly racks up 1700 pts per work unit. My dual-core finishes one every 24-36 hours, but the quads seem to crank out a project every 12-15 hours (naturally).

The regular client works on projects that rack up ~300 points max. So, a dual-core running 2 normal clients would get ~600 points daily vs 1700.

Personally, I think they're giving too many points for the SMP client, but, hey, if you want min/max your points, you should let your dual-core finish up the wu's it's on, then install the SMP client and try it out. You can have both versions installed on your machine as long as both aren't running at the same time. Run a SMP wu, then check out the EOC Folding stats to see if you really got a boost in Points Per Day (PPD). You should easily see by the daily graph they use.

For instance, I have 2 separate 2+ghz machines running normal clients (at work & home), and they rack up the occasional 250 pts. Then, when I got my dual-core running the SMP, my scoring jumped dramatically as I was suddenly nailing 1700 pointers. My dual-core cpu's are 2+ghz themselves, so I would consider them some-what equivalent to the 2 separate 2+ghz comps I got going (other intricacies, like increased bus & ram speeds on the dual-core aside.)

Try it, you might like it. And try the GPU client while you're at it. If you're going for points, see which one min/maxes it for you.

[T313C0mun1s7]

Then, when I got my dual-core running the SMP, my scoring jumped dramatically as I was suddenly nailing 1700 pointers.

I tried the smp client on my dual core as well, and I got a couple of those 1700 pointers. However, After about two of them I started to get hardware I/O errors that I could not get rid of until I uninstalled the smp client. So for me, I went back to the dual regular clients setup to play it safe - after all I actually need to use this computer.

[Tundro Walker]

I tried the smp client on my dual core as well, and I got a couple of those 1700 pointers. However, After about two of them I started to get hardware I/O errors that I could not get rid of until I uninstalled the smp client. So for me, I went back to the dual regular clients setup to play it safe - after all I actually need to use this computer.

Huh. I was reluctant to use it since it's still beta, but I haven't had any issues. I keep it going all the time, even when I'm doing something cpu-intensive.

BTW ... 10,000,000 step projects are rolling down the pipe now. Looks like Stanford's kicking it up a notch.